Timely Tunes ~ Favorite Songs of 2016

Note by Deanna: Many of us eagerly await the annual favorite songs playlist that my son, Christopher Piercy, compiles every year. I appreciate the countless hours that go into this endeavor and am happy to share his work here. I am also grateful that he is willing to keep his ol’ mom in the loop on current music via weekly Timely Tunes posts. Thanks, Chris!

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Favorite Songs of 2016

by Christopher Piercy

2016 has been a dichotomous year of so many happy moments in my personal life as well as a lot of existential dread about the state of the world we live in. A nasty, buffoonish, dangerous man was chosen to hold the most powerful political position in the world, and we have seen an alarming rise in white nationalist, ultra-right rhetoric in the United States and Europe. In the musical world we were graced with so much affirming, powerful, beautiful new music, but we also lost so many musical icons. David Bowie and Leonard Cohen managed to leave behind two of their most incredible albums before passing on; tying up the loose ends of their staggering careers. On the flip side, one can’t help but selfishly wish that Prince could have done the same. Maybe he did and we just haven’t heard it yet. 2017 is going to be the year of fighting to stay optimistic, in the face of what feels like the Apocalypse. Sometimes music is about the only thing that buoys us. I’ll briefly touch on a few of the trends in music this year in the following breakdown. Scroll down for my 101 favorite songs of the year as well as an accompanying Spotify playlist.

Metal had one of its most underwhelming years in recent memory, at least to my ears. I’m drawn to heavy, discordant music to help me process heavy emotions or the hovering fog of an insane world, but relatively few metal records managed to sink their teeth into me. There were exceptions, of course, with very strong offerings from Neurosis, Inquisition, Cobalt, The Body, Krallice, SubRosa, Oathbreaker, Asphyx, Gorguts, Inter Arma, Nails, and Oranssi Pazuzu. Opeth continued down the weird, if cautiously admirable, prog-rock road they have been on for a few records now, and I continue to be pretty unmoved about this direction. It was surprising to hear Metallica sound newly charged up, after so many years of embarrassing misfires, but it didn’t take long before the dust settled and I was able to hear their new album for what it really is: a workmanlike and unnecessary facsimile of a sound they perfected in the 80’s. The less said about Phil Anselmo’s year, the better. Also, four of my close friends, who happen to be in the killer band Our Mother’s Martyr, released a great progressive death metal album (“Quarantine“). I don’t factor music made by friends into these lists, as the bias is too strong, but I highly suggest you check that album out.

Hip-hop continues to fracture off into unendingly weird, fascinating directions where old-school wordsmiths like Kendrick Lamar can thrive next to the abstract nihilism of Danny Brown or the jokey irreverence of Lil Yachty. Chance the Rapper continued his life-affirming climb to the top with “Coloring Book”, perhaps the year’s most joyous, most ecstatic album (or mixtape…it’s hard to distinguish the difference in this post-physical world of distribution). Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” may have been catapulted to the top of the pop charts by a viral Instagram challenge (weird times, these), but it’s also one of the most experimental, darkest, and most interesting #1 hits in recent memory. It was also a well-deserved victory lap for a triumphantly free and sober Gucci Mane. Young Thug released his most satisfying and succinct work yet with “JEFFERY”, continuing to sound like no one else on the planet; a constant experimenter and boundary-pusher of heteronormativity who confounds as many people as he charms. On the jaw-dropping “Kanye West”, he managed to pull Wyclef Jean into his orbit and allow him to sound more vibrant and relevant than he has since The Fugees released “The Score”. Thank the gods that A Tribe Called Quest came back after eighteen long years to give us one more woke masterpiece. Drake’s “Views” is missing from my list because, to me, the album was a monochromatic, overlong slog with too few highlights. Sorry, Drake. We also watched Kanye unravel spectacularly in excruciating slow motion all year, but that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that “The Life of Pablo” is a glorious, wonderful mess of an album. The gospel hosannas of “Ultralight Beam” and the paranoid darkness of “Real Friends” are two of the best songs he has ever done, displaying to anyone with open ears and who can look past all the off-record drama why he is still a great cultural game-changer.

Rock continues to show growing pains, as guitar-centric music struggles to stay relevant in the cultural conversation while at the same time stretching into new modes of expression. But some artists that at least have a foot in the rock universe managed to excite. David Bowie released a crushing final testament and meditation on death that stands with his greatest work, Iggy Pop gave us one of his strongest albums in decades, Radiohead continue to be Radiohead, Nick Cave and PJ Harvey are artists who never seem to misfire, and The Drive-By Truckers are still perhaps the greatest American rock band working. Lambchop’s fabulously odd “FLOTUS” is also worth mentioning, but I’m still processing its labyrinth and I couldn’t divorce any one track for the purpose of a playlist focused on singular moments. Car Seat Headrest, Mitski, Kevin Morby, Angel Olsen, Pinegrove, Savages, and White Lung are among the new generation who seem willing and able to keep the fires burning. If 2016 taught us anything about the current state of rock, it’s that women seem to be contributing some of the most powerful statements.

If you are looking for critical assessment of the year in country music, I’m probably not the best person to ask. I do, however, think that Margo Price is one of the more wonderful new songwriting voices. Sturgill Simpson released the haunting, weird, and refreshing “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth”. And even Miranda Lambert surprised me at the tail-end of the year with the very strong “The Weight of These Wings”. While country radio continues to be a total bro-fest, sounding more influenced by 80’s hair metal power ballads than outlaw country, women singers and songwriters are the dynamic counterbalances attempting to upend the patriarchal nature of Nashville.

Out on the fringes of electronic and experimental music is where some of the most thrilling art is being made. Aphex Twin and Autechre sound as sonically daring and invigorated as ever, Nicolas Jaar employs a polyglot bundle of disparate sounds, Lindstrom, Leon Vynehall, and others propelled house music into bold new directions, Tim Hecker makes fractal distortion sound like god, and ANOHNI (with production help from Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke) released one of the most crushingly visceral and abstract protest albums you will hear. There seemed to be an endless stream of incredibly diverse sounds emanating from the outskirts of musical expression this year.

Rihanna had three songs this year that could easily be on this list (but, in order to try to keep things diverse, I settled on only one), with the perfect “Work”, “Needed Me”, and “Kiss It Better” all on seemingly endless repeat in my car and in my headphones. It was an especially triumphant year for the sisters Knowles, as both Beyonce and Solange released masterpieces of black feminist power. I listened to Solange’s “A Seat at the Table” more than any other album this year, and “Lemonade” stood watch over 2016 like the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

Every year I maintain a running playlist of songs that grab my ear, and this year that playlist stretched well past 400 tracks. I have spent the past month and a half listening intently to try to narrow things down to a neat 100 songs, and to attempt to put them in some sort of hierarchical order of importance to me. It’s not an exact science, as there are at least 50 songs that it pained me to leave off of this list, and the order of the ones included could easily shift depending on my mood, but I’m pretty happy with what I came up with. That said, it was a no-brainer to settle on Beyonce’s “Formation” as the clear champion in a year of tough competition. It was an empowered anthem, one not written for me necessarily, but which shook me all the same, and seemed to set the tone for everything that followed it musically in 2016. Alas, it isn’t on Spotify, so it is omitted from the accompanying playlist, so I expanded my top 100 to 101. This was a work of love, and something that took countless hours, so I hope you find some new music to dig here.

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I'm a Francophile with a hippie heart, trying to create a beautiful life in the country while dreaming of Paris. Join me as I share inspiration to help you create your own "beautiful life".